5/15/2002 @ 12:01AM

Should Ancient Library Be Excavated?

Eight distinguished British and American classicists are calling for the immediate resumption of excavation at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum in Southern Italy. In a letter published in The London Times, they warned that flooding now poses a “grave danger” to the site and its precious library of ancient manuscripts. They also fear that damage could result from further volcanic eruptions or earthquakes.

Professor
Robert
Fowler
Robert Fowler
, a Greek specialist at the University of Bristol, and seven colleagues from British and American universities issued an international appeal: “The excavation must be completed, and the building preserved. Most importantly, the books must be brought to light. We can expect to find good contemporary copies of known masterpieces and to recover works lost to humanity for two millennia. A treasure of greater cultural importance can scarcely be imagined.”

Among the authors whose works could lie buried beneath the volcanic debris are Sophocles, Euripides, Aristotle, Virgil, Horace and Livy. A full excavation might cost several million pounds, but this, the classicists argue, would be a small price to recover unknown writings by these intellectual giants.

The Villa of the Papyri had been partly excavated in 1752-54, when archaeologists discovered the only intact library of texts from Roman times. This important site, which had been buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, appears to have been the seaside retreat of Calpurnius Piso, the father-in-law of Julius Caesar. It is still the largest Roman villa ever found.

What proved most exciting about the Herculaneum villa was its contents–1,800 carbonized papyri rolls, mainly philosophical texts in Greek by Philodemus of Gadera. The excavated papyri were very difficult to decipher, and serious study of them did not begin until the 1970s, when professor
Marcello
Gigante
Marcello Gigante
of the University of Naples initiated systematic research on the scrolls. He died last November, and the letter to the Times expressed concern that with his passing, the impetus for his project might be lost.

Gigante believed there were probably other scrolls buried in the Villa of the Papyri. No Latin texts had been found, and he suggested that these might have been in a different room. With his encouragement, further archaeological excavation began in the early 1990s, and this revealed that the villa was much larger than had been assumed, and that it originally stretched down toward the sea on four terraces. It was also suggested that during the eruption of Vesuvius efforts had been made to remove papyri in packing cases.

But work was halted in 1998, when only about a fifth of the villa had been uncovered.
Antonio De
Simone
Antonio De Simone
, the archaeologist responsible for the excavations, is angry. “In Italy our heritage is administered by officials who often change priorities,” he says. “It is a scholarly imperative that we continue with the excavation.” The site is currently waterlogged and closed to the public.

Excavate Or Conserve?

On the face of it, the decision to halt the search for papyri appears unfortunate, but inquiries by The Art Newspaper reveal a much more complex situation.

To some extent, there is a divide between classicists and archaeologists. Classicists are eager for further texts to study, while archaeologists are only too aware of the problems of preserving what has been found. The suggestion is that the signatories of the Times letter, many of them from Oxford, are living in ivory towers, far away from the complex and sometimes murky problems on the ground in Italy.

Andrew
Wallace-Hadrill
Andrew Wallace-Hadrill
, director of the British School at Rome and chairman of the international scientific committee responsible for the Herculaneum Conservation Project, is a classicist, but he is based in Italy and also deeply involved in the archaeological scene. He says that any buried papyri are in no danger from flooding, since, if they exist, they lie under a deep deposit of volcanic debris.

“The papyri are safe and will remain so until we start messing around with them,” he says. “Any object that is still under the material remains of a volcanic eruption is in a stable state. It can not degenerate further.” Although further volcanic activity could, theoretically, lead to the papyri being buried deeper, it would be unlikely to damage them.

Wallace-Hadrill also points out that only about half of the papyri that have been discovered have been read. The other half are too blackened for scholars to study them with the technology now available. “It is very difficult to argue that we need to look for new papyri when we have not read the ones we already have,” he says.

But the main reason why the excavations were halted in 1998 was a change in priorities at Herculaneum.
Pietro Giovanni
Guzzo
Pietro Giovanni Guzzo
, who three years earlier had taken over as soprintendente of Pompeii and Herculaneum–the official responsible for managing the site–decided that conservation of what has been unearthed must be the number one priority.

Wallace-Hadrill agrees. “The existing excavations at Herculaneum are in a critical condition,” he says. “The site is unique in that it has upper floors to the buildings. But these upper floors are collapsing. The archaeological, historical and decorative evidence is crumbling before our eyes. There is also an appalling infestation of pigeons. Under Italian law, the pigeons cannot be killed, so they populate the ancient houses with predictable consequences. You cannot justify spending money on new excavations until you have preserved what you have already got.”

A major conservation project focusing on the old town has now been launched with the support of the Packard Humanities Institute.

A Questionable Dig

Critics of the 1990s excavation have also asked about the “trench” that was used to excavate the atrium of the Villa of the Papyri. This enormous gash cut through the site was nearly 500 meters long, 50 meters wide and 40 meters deep. Critics say that this technique is crude and that it resembles a mining project more than an archaeological dig. They further point out that since it included excavation below the water table it has caused the present flooding problem.

De Simone defends his approach, blaming the present soprintendente for halting work and then failing to maintain the pumping system. Others say that the pumping system did not work from the start because the wrong pumps were installed.

Guzzo is undertaking a feasibility study on the resumption of excavations and says this report is expected to take two years to complete. Excavation would be a massive project, and he says it is “crucial that we draw up a clear conservation and maintenance program before we consider resuming work. For instance, there is water underground, and we need to ensure that this will not damage the site if excavation is resumed.”

The present generation of scholars may lose the opportunity to study a cache of important texts from the classical world (if these exist), but arguably the papyri will be safer beneath a thick layer of volcanic debris than above ground.

Fowler and his colleagues disagree, believing that any papyri are endangered by the partly completed excavation. “Posterity will not judge us kindly,” he warns.

Fowler is now hoping to raise additional money specifically for the excavation of the Villa of the Papyri.